


Find Happiness

by orphan_account



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: 5 + 1 format, Gerard Way's comics as a soft of fucked up extended metaphor, Internalized Homophobia, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Gerard Way, Nonbinary Pete Wentz, Other, short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 04:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8563996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There are boys, girls, and Wentzes.(Pete plays the bass. He fucks up his hair. He doesn't know who he is yet.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working through some things lately and this baby fic is the product. Be warned if you have a sensitivity to cursing because there is a lot of it, and if sex or drugs and alcohol aren't your things there's nothing graphic, but they're all prevalent themes.

**1)**  There is a day when Pete Wentz wears a skirt. 

His girlfriend just left him for the chick he was cheating on her with, and his band's disintegrating more and more every practice. College looms and his parents loom and he loves Chicago but he spends a lot of time on public transit, trying to figure out what would happen if he just never got off the bus. So. He's at CVS trying to find some Black Flag records he wants, and he ends up buying a skirt. 

At home he puts it on. It's weird against his legs, pink, floral, and softer then he expected. Pete's nearly destroyed black tee doesn't look right with it, so he nicks a blouse out of his mom's closet and puts that on too. His reflection looks awkward and uncomfortable but defiant about it, in your face about it, _wanna fucking go_ about it.

He puts the skirt in one of those industrial envelopes and sends it to Gabe.

Pete calls Joe's house and says, "Let's start a motherfucking band. You could play guitar, Andy could drum, and I’ll play bass and sing."

Joe laughs delightedly. "Yeah dude! We've been talking-- but you're serious? Yes! But you're not singing, fuck, I'll get us a singer that won't make our adoring fans throw tomatoes at us. But you're kidding if you think Andy Hurley would so much as spit in our direction."

"I can lay the Wentz Charm on thick, it'll be great."

"No! No Wentz Charm! We do want him to actually join us."

Soon after: Joe meets Patrick at the bookstore, Andy finally gives up avoiding Pete and joins the band too, and a couple weeks after all of that, Gabe texts Pete, " _cute but more ur size?_ " Pete deletes it without answering. Some things don't deserve acknowledgement.

* * *

**2)** They sleep in the van most nights but occasionally someone who went to the show will take pity and offer up a futon or a couch as a sacrificial offering, usually due to Joe's surprisingly effective Huge Brown Eyes. Andy, Joe, and Pete are all used to this less then luxurious lifestyle, but it's new to Patrick, and since Pete is desperate to keep Patrick from leaving the band they save up money and splash out on a hotel.

"Only one room," warns Andy, "Because we're not millionaires." 

"Dude," breathes Patrick, "I could not care less. I'll cuddle with Joe and Pete can sleep in the bathtub."

Pete's not sure if Patrick's kidding or not so he leaves his bag in the car and finds a beautiful girl in the hotel lobby. He plasters on his least-toothy-but-still-charming smile. When Lisa starts leaning into his space and tugging at the longer strands of her hair, Pete figures he's safe. They get to second base in the elevator and Lisa's still running for third when Pete pokes his head into his band’s room to let them know he's found his own space to be tonight. 

"Don't wait up," he tells them. 

Lisa takes him back to her hotel room and they don't get much sleep that night at all. Lisa lets him fuck her and then she does pretty much whatever she wants with him. When they're both worn out and grinning smugly at each other, they flop in a pile of limbs onto the clean bed. Lisa's the big spoon. Her arm is slung casually over Pete's waist and she rubs circles on his bare hip.

"I'm flying out early tomorrow but this was absolutely worth it," she mumbles into his neck, "My boyfriend would've loved you. He's got a thing for the pretty ones."

"Um--" Pete stiffens or something because she laughs and pats him comfortingly.

"No, we're open, this was okay. You're not like some illicit hotel affair. He's a sweet guy. Calls me sugar; says I'm a darling."

This time Pete knows he twitches. Lisa twists over him and raises an interested eyebrow and Pete tries to get up but she rolls with him until she's sitting firmly on his waist, hands planted on his chest.

"He calls me sweetheart," she drawls, slowly. Deliberately. Pete knows he's blushing but he can't stop, can hardly move. "He calls me _baby girl_."

When Pete rolls up to the van the next morning, he's yawning like all hell and the rest of his band already beat him there.

"Missed your beauty sleep, Princess?" teases Joe.

Pete slams the door with a furious crash. "Don't you fucking ever call me that again." 

* * *

**3)** It's so late it's early, or the other way around, and Pete's at a house party. The bass is so loud that the liquor in Pete's soho cup is doing that Jurassic Park thing with the footsteps of the t-rex shaking the water. Pete was originally here with people that he's since lost, but the view is good regardless because to get in here you've gotta be at least a seven. There are girls in the scene everywhere, some that Pete recognizes and some that he used to know and a couple he's definitely avoiding but he can't remember why. When the label told him they got busses this tour Pete had been delighted obviously, because his friends are smelly, but that delight had faded out into a general sense of panic because labels spend money on busses when the bands riding in them are actually going somewhere. Pete's drinking. He's not thinking about it. 

"We're getting big," he enthuses to the girl next to him on the couch, "I... I'm... 'M band? Busses?" The Person Next To Him On The Couch's eyes widen dramatically.

"Busses?" she hisses, "Busses...sss... They mean you're goin' UP!"

"Right!" Pete's nodding but the room keeps moving disproportionately. It takes him a while to realize that means that the Couch Chick is tugging him through the house and down into the hallway, hands tight on his wrist, giggling delightedly.

"Okay," whispers Couch Chick, when they're as far down the hallway they can get without actually being in the bathroom. "No'w you're secret's safe." she hiccups. "No'one can hear us."

"What secret?" whispers back Pete, "Sss jus'ta bus!"

Couch Chick has a very square jaw that becomes obvious when it's this close to Pete. There's a strange looking texture to it that he wants to touch but can't name, and her hands are calloused in a way that's totally awesome but also very unlike most of the girls Pete meets who aren't in bands. Her neck is elegant and long. Her eyelashes are dark and mascara free. Pete squints at her, trying to figure out what secret they're talking about and what her name was again.

"But busses mean! They--" she stops midsentence, wobbling slightly on her feet. Pete grabs at her arm to steady her and it's firm and muscled. Before she can collect her thoughts, Pete interrupts.

"You... Name?"

She beams again, moving her hands to the wall so she's balanced better and Pete can hook his hands around her waist. "Jam-- _Hic!_ \--ie."

Jamie has stubble.

Pete isn't sure what to do and he can't see straight, exactly, so he says, "H've you ever seen Jurr'sic Park?"

Something more is about to happen that Pete can't identify through his fuzzy head, but then somebody's elbowing past them to get to the bathroom and they've got a tight sickly face like they're about to vomit, and in the resulting scramble for a new secret place Pete loses Jamie somewhere between the kitchen and the end of the hall. Finding himself empty handed once more, Pete stumbles back to the couch only to find it occupied. The new person in his spot is a stocky blonde dude holding a beer and who Pete's pretty sure is a sound tech, maybe, but he remembers something about drums.

Plopping himself into the tech's lap and thus reclaiming his spot, Pete makes grabby hands for the beer and pouts when it's not forthcoming. The tech isn't fazed at all and simply readjusts Pete so he's crammed between the end of the couch and Bob.

"Bob!" Pete remembers, "Bob Bob Bob Bryar!"

"Wentz," nods Bob. "You're wasted, man."

"There was a Jamie," explains Pete, "An' I'm gettin' a bus. Bob. Bob Bryar, did you ever watch dinosaurs?" When Bob looks patiently confused, Pete points to the beer, which is still thumping with the bass.

"Ah." allows Bob. Bob, Pete remembers, doesn't say much. This is okay because Pete says quite a lot.

"B'b." he whispers, "Jamie has stubble. She's got." he starts giggling again and brings a hand up to his chin, and Bob sighs wearily and pulls him up from the couch.

"C'mon. I'm driving you home. Just this once."

He falls asleep in the passenger's seat of Bob's car. He's thinking about Jamie with the stubble, and he's uncomfortable.

* * *

**4)** Pete crawls his way across the floor of My Chemical Romance's bus and pops up next to Mikey's bunk. He's congratulating himself on his stealth until Gerard yells from the kitchenette, "He's asleep!" and bangs on the table with his huge-ass coffee mug like a judge's gavel.

Boomaranging back to the table with Gerard, Pete says as reproachfully as he can, "Well he won't be _anymore_."

This is a fantastic argument but it's completely wasted on Gerard, who's got his sketchbook out and seems to be drawing a person in a weird costume walking upside down on a ceiling of a space station. Pete fully intends to hold onto this righteous anger he's built up, but Gerard lightly traces a couple lines and it becomes obvious the upside down man is actually levitating, half an inch or so from touching the ceiling. Pete scoots closer and gets a little bit hypnotized because he knew that in theory Gerard was good at this, but he's _good_ at it, and Pete likes watching people do things they're good at.

"What's his name?" he asks, and it's too loud in the morning, somehow, but he doesn't take it back.

"The Séance," Gerard replies, and then adds, unprompted, "He's a character in this thing I'm making. A comic. The Umbrella Academy."

Pete watches quietly as Gerard shades for a while and then flips to a new page and draws circles that somehow, without Pete understanding how, form two scrappy looking identical twins with ray guns. One's got an arm propped on the other's head, grinning cocksure while the other one flips them off good-naturedly. Gerard produces a pack of pencil crayons from somewhere in the folds of his pyjamas and colours in their hair-- one blue, the other pink. 

"Vaya," says Gerard, before Pete can ask, "And Vamos. Vaya's blue, Vamos got pink. They're part of this, uh--"

"--Other comic?"

"Ha! Yes. They're desert warriors, but they're not very good."

"At being warriors?" 

"At. Being people?" Gerard scrubs a hand through his hair and purses his lips. "I'm pursuing this morally ambiguous sort of thing with them, maybe? I'm still working it out. Their society views death super abstractly so they're, like, super unconcerned about that? And they're pissed at the world and this company BL/ind, but you didn't ask about that."

"Vaya doesn't seem too pissed he's being-- What?"

Gerard's shaking his head. "Not he. They."

"What?"

"They're genderfluid, so instead of using she or he, just use they to save confusion. I'm not sure how to handle that in the comic yet, but Shaun's got a bunch of great ideas."

Pete stares. "Genderfluid?" He can feel his pulse in his neck. 

Gerard tilts his head and smiles patiently. "Mikey's a dude all the time, Lindsey's a girl all the time, and I'm a bit of both all of the time. Some people are neither. Genderfluid is mixing it up a little bit. There are a lot of terms and none of them are better then the other, but generally -- you've really never heard of this before? -- nonbinary is used as an umbrella term for someone who isn't super attached to either male or female, and --"

Mikey shuffles into the kitchenette with a bleary look on his face and his nose scrunched up like he smells something terrible. "Way to get him started, Pete. Now he'll never shut up."

Pete hurls himself at Mikey and tackles him into the refrigerator, licks his cheek obnoxiously, and while Mikey weakly tries to fight him off, Pete crows, "You're back! Just in time! I was about to leave you for your vampire brother! We're going to elope together and live in a desert fringe society, outside the borders of art and gender." 

Over Gerard's weird pitchy laugh, Mikey kisses Pete's forehead distractedly and says, "But if you and Gee never get married, when else when I deliver my 'if you write a song about this I'll kick your ass,' speech?"

Gerard scoffs. "You deliver that speech twice daily."

Later, when Pete's stolen most of Mikey's breakfast and is crunching his way back through the parking lot to his own bus and band members, he shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket and finds Gerard's drawing of Vamos and Vamos. Bad at being people. Flipping off the world in general. He pins it to the wall in his bunk, beside the picture of Hemmy and below the one of Patrick's high school graduation.

* * *

**5)** Part of being Pete Wentz is that you are Pete Wentz all of the time.

He knows that he's exhausting. This isn't news and it isn't an emotional sore spot for him anymore, it's just something that's true. He's bouncy and he's clingy, he's a maniac and he's depressing, he's not tolerable unmedicated, he's not manageable if he gets too happy, or useful if his prescriptions are too strong. Patrick, Joe, and Andy take shifts spending time with him. To make his contributions to the band remotely usable they have to go through a Patrick Filter, and then all his words are spellchecked beyond that because the fictional is hard for him to identify sometimes. His personal life is everybody's personal life, and that sells magazines. What keeps him in Fall Out Boy is therapy and his name, and he knows that; it's just difficult sometimes because every else gets a break and he is still here, all of the time, being Pete Wentz.

There are people in Pete's house. He can hear them. They creak and groan with the storm outside and it sounds like these intruders are on the main floor so Pete jammed himself under the bed in his guest room.

Gabe picks up on the third ring and says, "You're not going to believe this shit Pete, listen the fuck up."

There's either a mothball or an actual moth or possibly a flesh-eating spider brushing against Pete's left arm, where he's crammed himself into the corner of the bed where there are walls on two sides of him and the dust is thickest. Gabe's stories are the best so Pete makes what he hopes is a suitably encouraging noise and tries to convince himself that the people aren't actually on top of the bed, just in his entryway, but he clearly gave something away because Gabe's asking him what's wrong. 

"Pete?" 

"I think there might be some people in my house." He says it all, fast, and laughs before choking it off because oh s _hit_ if it wasn't obvious he was home before then it sure is now. There's more shuffled movement from down the hall, a scuttling of feet, and Pete completely freezes up. The phone falls out of his hands and he scrabbles after it, pressing it so tightly to his ear that it actually hurts a little bit.

"--ETE!"

"Shh, shh," Pete hisses, "They're downstairs, man!" He laughs and aborts again, curls up into a smaller ball. "I can hear them. On the stairs. They're coming to kill me Gabe, I can hear them, and they’re--"

"Pete, you got back in town yesterday, right? I helped you get all your touring crap into the house?" 

"Fuck, I--"

"Yes or no?"

"Yes."

"Okay. When I left I locked the doors because you don't need the paparazzi all up in your shit, and you haven't been outside since. Yes or no?"

"Yes."

"Did you actually hear anyone break in? Shattering, yelling, gunshots?"

"No." Pete gets where Gabe's going with this all of a sudden, and he feels like an absolute moron. The panic leaves him completely like someone letting air out of a leftover balloon from some little kid's birthday.

"So with that in mind, is there a chance that what you're hearing is Hemmingway?" Gabe asks, and Pete crawls to the edge of the bed right as his dog snuffles into the room, tail waggling, his paws on the hardwood making the noises that freaked him out so completely moments earlier. Pete drags an initially reluctant but then affectionate Hemmingway under the bed with him, and lets himself be subjected to the licking and doggy kisses that Hemmy decides Pete needs.

"Good now." Pete says, after a few minutes of getting his heart back in the right spot. "Sorry man. I don't know whatever the fuck."

"Anytime," Gabe promises easily. "Want me to call anyone? I can come over."

"No, don't. I'm good." 

While neither of them says anything, neither of them hangs up either. Pete can hear Gabe breathing on the other end of the phone and catches a few snatches of whatever garbage pop song he's got playing. One of the best things about Gabe is that he just doesn't leave.

"Do you still have that skirt?" Pete blurts. It surprises him after he gets it out, because he hasn't thought about the damn thing in years.

"Mmm-hmm," Gabe hums, "Too small for me. My legs looked so fucked up, dude, it was like if a giraffe was wearing a tutu. Do you want it back? I can shake out the hoards of mice that most likely live in it."

"I don't, but. I. Fuck, I'm just-- Okay, you know about gender shit, right?"

"Do I look like a pillar of masculinity?" 

"Stupid question. But I'm not. A pillar, I mean. Or I am, but not entirely. Like, how you used to make fun of me when I wore girl jeans? I know I'm kind of messed up right now but that's how I am all the time. I'm not super attacked to boy jeans and I've _got_ girl jeans but usually I'm just wearing jeans? And not thinking about what brands they are or whatever? But people assume I get my jeans from the men's section and that's fine, I don't mind them thinking that because all jeans look sort of the same from the outside and from a distance, but if you ever did my laundry I thought you should know. About my. Jeans."

Gabe doesn't talk immediately but then he says, "I love you Pete, and I completely get what you're saying, but next time I'm over we're going to brainstorm a way less emo metaphor for you to use."

* * *

**+1)** Patrick sings like a goddamn angel, but he doesn't like to talk much between songs or after the set. Pete suspects that if he gave Andy the microphone all he would do is wheeze into it because that drummer stuff he does looks exhausting, and if Joe was in charge of their witty banter then he would get a taste for center stage and then leave the band for stand up comedy, breaking Pete's heart and making everybody sad. Because of these solid and genuine reasons, it's all left to Pete to talk to the kids. 

'Winging it with occasional glances at the setlist,' is Pete's primary strategy in these cases, but he's occasionally got messages that he plans beforehand and in those cases he waits for the penultimate song in their set, when it's as dramatic as possible and the kids are genuinely listening to what he says, not just hoping he shuts up and lets the talent get back to work. 

Accordingly, it's as the last notes for, 'I Don't Care,' fade out that Pete paces towards the crowd and screams, "HAVE WE GOT ANY TRANS KIDS IN THE AUDIENCE TONIGHT?!"

There's a startled but resounding scream in answer, and Pete can make out some people jumping and yelling, waving their arms.

"HAVE WE GOT ANY QUEER KIDS IN THE AUDIENCE TONIGHT?!" Pete screams again, more demandingly, and in response the yells get even louder. "BE TRANS, BE QUEER!" The microphone and the stage lights and the sweat pouring down his face lend him this feel of command, of cosmic rightness. "BE YOUR OWN FUCKING SELF AND BE YOU ON YOUR FUCKING OWN TERMS! LOVE AND EXIST AND BE RIGHT IN THAT, BE GOOD! BE KIND!" He grins, wilder then he's felt in months, sharper, better, and adds, "EXCEPT FOR NOW! GIVE IT UP FOR MY FAMILY, YOU'VE BEEN A GREAT AUDIENCE, GOODNIGHT!"

Pete steps back from the microphone and turns to Patrick for the count in, and Patrick meets him with a blinding smile.  
  
The drums crash over him and the guitar takes him home.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you thought!


End file.
